Chatter

The Melody Lingers On
Most ex-beaus have only memories, but rock star Peter Frampton may have a hit. Frampton fell for Anne Lockhart, June (Lassie) Lockhart's flame-haired daughter, after seeing her on Battlestar Galactica last season. Before they met he wrote her a love song called She Don't Reply ("Right now you're just a fantasy I Shall I keep it that way"). The romance went on the rocks after a few dates and Battlestar was canceled, but She Don't Reply has made it onto Frampton's latest LP and is also out as a single.

Court Costs
An Illinois judge with a flair for image-making advised his colleagues at a conference this month that the right kind of threads could help them win reelection. Citing an unorthodox source, Samuel Harrod III of Woodford County circuit court said that on the TV program Hawaii Five-O star Jack Lord wears the perfect ensemble for the jurist without his robes: blue suits and plain ties. "He dresses like a lawyer should," affirmed the judge. "Very flattering," mused Lord from Hawaii, where he is in his 12th season as the sartorially straight Mc-Garrett, who is a detective, not a lawyer. There's one more point, Your Honor: Those plain blue doubleknit suits, expressly made for Lord by Hollywood tailor Joseph Cotroneo, cost between $700 and $800 each.

Written Out
Kate Mulgrew, who plays Mrs. Columbo, newspaper reporter, is bugged by requests for pictures of herself with Peter Falk, who played—and may yet again play—Columbo. Kate and Falk have never met, and Peter dismisses the spin-off anyway. In the past, Mrs. Columbo has come home to a daughter and a dog, and script references to the detective have been veiled. Hereafter there will be none at all. "I assume we got a divorce," says Kate, "and I was awarded custody of the basset hound."

The Maple Leaf Never
The dais was full in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria at a black-tie dinner before the Vancouver-Tampa Bay game to decide the championship of the North American Soccer League. Henry Kissinger, NASL chairman, was there; so were Eunice Shriver, Johan Cruyff and Pelé, among other notables. ABC commentator Jim McKay began the program by announcing the orchestra would play both countries' national anthems, starting with the stirring O Canada. Silence. McKay repeated his announcement. Bandsmen pawed frantically through their sheet music. More silence. More embarrassment. As it became obvious they did not have the music, a man rose from a table, strode to the rostrum, announced he would render O Canada a cappella and did so in a strong baritone. When Gus Panz, a director of the Vancouver Whitecaps and ex-opera singer, finished, everyone cheered for a full minute. Two days later Vancouver won too.

Ali? Oops
After her concert at L.A.'s Greek Theatre, Natalie Cole settled in for a backstage reception with 150 friends. Predictably, there were would-be crashers. One was a tall black man who insisted he was Muhammad Ali and looked enough like The Greatest to give qualms to Natalie's doormen. Just the same, they told him to get lost. The real Ali, a long-time Cole admirer, was already there.

Furthermore

•Musing on his career, singer-actor Harry Belafonte likes the possibility of playing Othello, but worries about the curtain call. "If I were the best at it, the best there was...well, right after I'd destroyed Desdemona, I'm sure someone in the balcony would stand up and shout: 'Sing Matilda!' "

•Kathleen Quinlan (of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) still wants "A house and land and a lot of critters" out of life, but has already latched onto her dream car. It's a beat-up blue 1957 Chevy pickup—"the kind you see all the Beverly Hills gardeners driving," she says. It does have one drawback, allows Quinlan: "All my friends want me to help them move."

•It's not easy keeping ABC's Mork & Mindy squeaky clean and politically upright—the network censors seem to work overtime. Last month ABC hassled the show's producers over a script that poked fun at TV advertising—the ultimate no-no—but finally let it pass with compromises. The censors are now questioning another script, saying it not include the word "pregnant." Co-producer Bruce Johnson, fighting the ruling, says incredulously, "In 1979 American television, it's mind-boggling."